Britain was at its best in the 1950s - and has been spoiled by bad parents

Britain was at its peak as peaceful society in the 1950s, and has been ruined by bad parents, according to Frank Field.

By Christopher Hope, Whitehall Editor

8:37PM GMT 26 Nov 2008

Violent crime has soared since then because of a "collapse in the art of good parenting", the Labour MP said.

Mr Field called for schools to offer classes to teach children who were "desperate" to be good fathers and mothers.

Adults should also be given a "social highway code to spell out what is proper behaviour", he said.

In a speech at the University of Leicester, Mr Field said Britain was at its best in Fifties, a decade made famous by Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's remark in 1957 that "most of our people had never had it so good".

Mr Field said: "The 1950s were the peak years for Britain being a peaceful and self-governing kingdom. We only have to look at the levels of crime, particularly violent crime, to register just how dramatic a change has occurred."

Related Articles

There were now more violent crimes recorded by the police in the past 12 months than between 1900 and 1977, he said.

More people were beaten up or stabbed in his Birkenhead constituency than in the whole of the country a century ago.

The root cause of these ills was "the growing collapse in the art of good parenting", he said

Mr Field argued that families were the best place to develop "a sense of personal responsibility for one's actions, a thoughtfulness for others and a growing sense of self-government", he said.

Mr Field praised a report from the think tank the Centre for Social Justice which said Britain faced social collapse.

It warned the UK would be saddled with "generation of disturbed and aggressive young people doomed to repeat and amplify the social breakdown disfiguring their lives and others around them".

Mr Field said Britain was now entering a "social crisis [which is] every bit as dramatic as the economic recession into which we are entering."

He called for parent lessons to be part of the national curriculum using English literature books and "science lessons on how the animal kingdom nurtures its young".

He continued: "Society should formally welcome its new members, reminding parents of what is expected of them and what the community will contribute.

"The late Victorians and the Edwardians had such a passion for creating good citizens that it became an issue of great public concern and drive.

"The Government needs to introduce a series of reforms that kick-start our social economy back towards prizing good parenting."

Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, who chairs the Centre for Social Justice, welcomed Mr Field's comments. He said: "Our concern was how do we mend the broken part of society that has been failed by decades of government policy.

"Their lives are blighted by crime and anti social behaviour, worklessness and addiction with virtually no hope of escaping the cycle of dependency and deprivation.

"Without early intervention targeting the young mothers and fathers and by working with their children before they are three we never will never be able to turn round the lives of those trapped in breakdown Britain."

But the Family and Parenting Institute denied that the country's families were "going to hell in a handcart".

Sally Gimson, the charity's director of communications, said: "Most families make a good job of bringing up their children. We know that some families are struggling, particularly where generations have not worked and where many children and their parents live in poverty.

"Long term worklessness has a huge impact on families and can lead to behaviours of despair. We very much support the need for early support for families where there are these kinds of problems."

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrats' shadow home secretaru, added: "The 1950s seem in retrospect like a settled decade, but a lot was swept under the carpet and behind the twitching net curtains.

"Frank Field may have forgotten that 33 per cent of men born in 1953 – according to a big research survey – have a criminal record and there was a lot of unrecorded and unremarked violence.

"Thankfully, we are now much less tolerant of violent behaviour whether at home or in public places."